With “Shadow of the Vampire” opening on Friday, this is a good time to look back at some of the screen’s most interesting neckbiters.

* “Shadow” is the fictional story of the making of one of the earliest vampire flicks, “Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horrors” (1922), by renowned German filmmaker F.W. Murnau.

In the new movie, Murnau is played by John Malkovich, while Max Schreck, who has the title role in “Nosferatu,” is portrayed by Willem Dafoe in a campy, over-the-top performance.

Even after 80 years or so, the real Schreck – with rodent-like face, grotesque ears and elongated fingers and fingernails – remains the screen’s most grotesque bloodsucker.

* The count who counts most is Bela Lugosi, the Hungarian who played the role on stage before putting on cape and formal attire in Tod Browning’s 1931 “Dracula.” Lugosi’s best line: “I never drink . . . wine.”

* While Browning’s “Dracula” was filmed by day on the Universal Pictures lot, a director named George Melford was making a Spanish-language version by night, using the same sets and script but a different cast.

For years, the Spanish movie was believed lost. A copy was finally found, restored, and released on home video.

* One of the most sensual and elegant vampire movies has to be “The Hunger,” directed in 1983 by Tony Scott, brother of Ridley (“Blade Runner,” “Gladiator”) Scott.

The setting is chic, modern Manhattan, where icy vampire Catherine Deneuve lives with lover David Bowie. They’ve been together for several centuries, but something suddenly goes wrong with Bowie’s biological clock and he starts to fall apart.

A new lover for Deneuve is, of course, required, and scientist Susan Sarandon fills the coffin.

Best bits: Bowie aging from 30 to 85 in a matter of minutes, and the Deneuve-Sarandon makeout romp.

* For more lesbian goings-on, check out “Daughters of Darkness” (1971), a Belgian goodie in which a honeymoon couple encounters a beautiful vampire (Delphine Seyrig) at a seaside hotel.

The vamp is based on the real-life Elisabeth Bathory, a 17th-century countess who, it is said, sought to preserve her youth by bathing in the blood of young, female virgins, several hundred of whom she kept locked up in her castle.

* For a laugh, try “Vampire’s Kiss” (1989), with Nicolas Cage magnificent as a yuppie who thinks he’s turning into a bloodsucker.

Or “Love at First Bite” (1979), in which the Count (George Hamilton) is evicted from his Transylvania castle and moves to New York, where he falls for a model (Susan St. James).

Richard Benjamin is hilarious as St. James’ shrink-boyfriend, but the car-chase finale is a letdown.

* Teenage vampires show up in two interesting 1987 updatings of the legend: Joel Schumacher’s “The Lost Boys,” in which young bloodsuckers roam the boardwalk in Santa Clara, Calif; and Kathryn Bigelow’s “Near Dark,” about a gang of undead vagabonds traveling through the West in a van.

* One of the most outlandish vampire outings is Abel Ferrara’s black-and-white “The Addiction” (1994). Lili Taylor is a coed-turned-vampire, and Christopher Walken has a cameo as a fellow neckbiter. Best scene: Taylor’s bloody graduation party.